You may have heard me raving about it on my Twitter feed, but the students in USC’s Interactive Media and Games program are amazing. Not only are they super creative and super smart, they’re also passionate about games as a force for social change. And that’s definitely true of MEGA, the undergrad group I’ve had the opportunity to work with on organizing the upcoming Rainbow Jam: a 24-hour game jam we’re running in conjunction with The Lavender Effect, a nonprofit whose mission is to spread information about the LGBTQ history of Los Angeles. The goal of the jam is to encourage participants to make games that address queer issues, but also to think about how queerness itself might be a mode of game design.
The Rainbow Jam is free and open to the public. We’ll be kicking things off with presentations from Andy Sacher and myself, along with workshops on game-making platforms for students who are new to game design (I’ll be talking about my absolutely favorite little tool, Emotica). We hope you’ll join us!
